Paul Newman.

The one with the blue eyes and the beer clause.

The man who grew up in a Shaker Heights museum of a house, where function bowed to perfection. Where his mother curated a home like an exhibit and he and his brother banged their heads on the walls just to leave a mark.

He knew he was taking James Dean's roles. Knew he wasn't the cool guy, but that he could play one. That luck was an art, and humility was the price of proximity to greatness.

The technical actor I didn’t grow up watching, but somehow always felt. I knew his face from the side of the salad dressing bottle. Didn't know his marriage would imprint something on me. That the way he and Joanne devoured each other - then set boundaries, then returned - would become an early blueprint for the kind of love I would try to understand.

He drank too much. She gave him rules. They broke each other and reassembled by candlelight. He tried to be a good dad. Went to therapy with his daughter. Admitted when he was too aloof. When he wouldn’t take his sunglasses off.

And still - he knew how to show up. In quiet ways. In giving ways. The Newman Foundation. The labels on jars. His face turned into a fundraising campaign for joy.

He wasn’t perfect. He was practiced. And that made him beautiful.

Some people are cool by nature. Paul Newman was cool by effort. By shadow. By sticking around.